GATV Free On Steam Today!

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I apologise. While that title is technically correct, I will understand if you found it misleading. There are clues: the letters are in the wrong place, the image shows Saint’s Row IV and not Grand Theft Auto, and there’s the fact that it looks it’s suggesting a game that costs a hundrety billion krugerrands is being released for free on its release day. That was never going to happen! Those were all hints. So what is this? GATV is free DLC for Saints Row IV. Like the original SR, it cheekily rides on the coat-tails of GTA, but in name only.
It’s a Johnny Gat costume, allowing you to dress up like the real star of the Saints Row series. It also comes with additional guns: a .50 cal rifle that blasts people off the ground, and a knife launcher that’s actually pretty grim. Seeing the cluster of shivs sticking out of the bunny’s stomach gave me a tiny pang of sympathy pains. It also comes with an Aisha costume.

You’d best be quick, though. After September 18th, you’ll have to buy it. But at least it’s available on the PC. Eh, Rockstar?

Quick poll: who ordered/intends to buy GTA:V on the consoles? I have it. I’m really keen to try the multiplayer, even if does have a ridiculously low player cap. 16 people in that huge world? APB had hundreds!

I also like how you can claim this free DLC even if you do not have the game. I’m not sure if it really does work or stay if you purchase the full game but on my Steam Account History is shows as “Saints Row IV GAT V Pack – Complimentary”.

Also, I am not getting GTA V for console. I will wait for the PC version.

I was tempted, but ultimately the pre-order bonus and day-one DLC ($90 extra if you want it all) means I’m just waiting for PC.
(And even then I’m not sure I’ll buy it if they have terrible DRM like with IV and maintain the awful DLC.)

Back in the summer sale a few years back when you could claim prizes, I remember claiming a dlc pack to AI War, even though I hadn’t bought it yet. As soon as I bought the original game, the DLC pack was there. Probably works as long as the DLC is completely free of charge.

And low it came to pass that the author and commenter joined in a game on the devils own system. Bereft of the true way of Mouse and Keyboard they ran to the devils system, picking up a simple device used by the most simple of animals, the “joy”pad.

Upon that day RPS was shook asunder, the hive mind rejecting the devils system and “joy”pad, cast the author out into the other world. For a brief time at least.

Waiting for PC version, secondly I’m actually really excited for only 16 player count. I prefer only coming across players once in a while, finding out what they’re doing by accident or if you go looking for them for a while rather than GTA IV where players were everywhere – if I wanted that kind of playground I would play JC2 multiplayer-mod.

Agreed, with that low amount of players you can actually have fun, while if you have high amounts it all ends up in nothing but a flatout-like crash of bullets, cars and helicopters. That’s no fun in my book.

I remember my local Nintendo magazine giving this game a lot of attention, a full walkthrough and stuff. Back then the grimdark world of 90’s comics had made few forays into other media so it must have looked cool and different, especially for Nintendo.

You must be new to PC gaming if you think GTAIV ranks as one of the most poorly optimized PC games. When it was released, sure, it ran like crap on any low-mid range gaming PC but that’s not the case now. I know for a fact that a mid-range machine can handle it fine and a low end machine (with a sensible owner that knows how to balance quality with performance) would surely run it adequately, albeit not at 60 fps.

@MasterDex – Sure, it runs great on a mid-range machine now… Some 5 years after it was released. I should hope it would, a mid-range GPU today would run circles around a top of the line GPU from 5 years ago. What’s your point?

No, a mid-range card wouldn’t run circles around a top of the line card from 5 years ago. If anything, they’d be about par with each other, the newer card obviously winning out – there hasn’t been a big leap in gpus for some time now. The big difference between the mid-range then and now for GTAIV is a gigabyte more of graphics memory – something most games even now don’t really need unless you’re pushing for quality.

And what was my point? Well, I made that quite clear: You must be new to PC gaming if you think GTAIV is one of the most horribly optimized game on PC.

Well, I should say I’m hedging my bets for two reasons. One is that R* seem to have got a bit better porting, at least in terms of Max Payne (different type of game, I know, but they seem to have actually put in effort). The other is that, even if it’s exactly as bad a port as IV, PCs have advanced enough to compensate.

(and a minor thing is that I’m a bit of a texture resolution whore anyway, and I expect the PC version to have higher res ones)

If I’m wrong, I can always wander into Edinburgh and throw eggs at their office windows (Even if they get a sister studio to do the porting).

Last night I was playing Civ 5 BNW, DX11 full settings 1080p. Had a blast.

Today I’ve been playing GTAV on a 7 year old console, just about 720p, no AA. Also had a blast.

I love my PC bretheren but they’re frustrating sometimes. Especially when most of them alternate between fawning over lo-fi indie stuff that could run quite happily on a Nokia and having a go at console games.

I don’t think anyone here is really having a go at console games and I don’t see what you find so frustrating about someone’s choice to wait for a PC version, whatever the reason may be.

What Rockstar and a lot of console-first developers do is purposefully hold back the PC version so they get the fools that rush in and pay the big bucks which helps to front-load their profits so they can run to the media screaming “Look! Look! We’re #1! Best Game Ever!”

Your choice is yours but personally, I don’t feel like spending 60 squid on a game that I’ll more than likely be able to get a “better” version of for a quarter of that price 6 months down the line. But that’s just me.

It’s not just a game to me, it’s an experience. That experience includes chatting to my peers tomorrow about all the awesome things we got up to and swapping stories. That’s worth a few extra quid for a few less pixels. To me at least.

It’s mostly reactionary. When consolers start talking about how modding is actually a huge negative to video games, one has to wonder why people are reaching so hard to attack PC gaming.
Also, some game companies – like, say, Rockstar – seem to act like “We don’t like you, PC gamers, but buy our games anyways.” Others say “Look, it’ll be console exclusive and we’ll release on PC” – that’s not that big a deal if said up front.
The PC/console gamers that I know run roughly about 50/50, and we all get along fine. I’m guessing it’s more about the worst representatives are the ones that shout the loudest on the Internet.

Heh I don’t know if any game will ever approach the sheer insanity that is just cause 2 multiplayer. I just wish they would hurry up and finish it!

I haven’t played a GTA game since vice city and as far as I can tell nothing much has changed since thencept pterttier graphics of course but I always found the gameplay in gta games lacking and its only fun as a sandbox for so long.

Honestly, I’m a bit curious what will happen when JC2 multiplayer is released to the masses. I almost feel like it works now because it’s a bit of an event whenever the servers open up, which means you get the massive player counts that make things interesting. Will you get anywhere near that same density of players when it’s available 24/7 and there are 100x the servers?

Wanna play GTAV on PC since I’m not a fan of 720p, 20fps dips, or auto-aim, but I’ll probably crumble and pick up the PS3 version tomorrow and then get it again on PC when it’s cheap. It’s a shame that doing so validates Rockstar’s tactic of delaying on PC.

No GTA V for me. Not until it comes to the master platform, anyway. To be completely honest, if they never do a PC port, it won’t bother me one bit. I’m sure it’s a great game, but I have very little desire to play it.

After pining for GTA 4 for a year or more, and finally getting it for PC, and wasting a weekend trying in vain to get it to run above 4fps and to actually draw the street textures instead of just the pipes beneath the street, and then not really even being that crazy about the game once I eventually did get it to run … to hell with Rockstar. They’re a console-game company that eventually gets around to remembering the PC. Usually. Unless it’s Red Dead Redemption. And assuming they do remember to port it, you’ll spend your first half hour with the game trying to opt out of Rockstar Social Club and/or dealing with baffling performance issues and bugs. Considering the huge backlog of unplayed games in my Steam library, putting Rockstar on my do-not-buy list was a pretty easy decision to make.

If it turns up free on Playstation+ before it ends up on PC, I suppose I’ll grab it, but even then I probably wouldn’t get around to playing it before the inevitable PC version rolls around.

I did the buying-on-multiple-formats thing for GTA4. I don’t really think that I want to do that this time around, and this time around I have a far larger backlog of games I can get around to playing while I wait for the PC version to come out in two years’ time, after we have to wait again after the release of GTA5 on the next-gen consoles.

Uh, it only sounds childish when you do it. Jelly purchased a rival company’s product to get himself a game, and send a message by voting with his wallet … your scenario involves buying something you have no intention of using, as a pretext for insulting someone on the internet. I mean, I get that you haven’t actually bought a redundant copy, but still, there’s no need to belittle a person for buying Saints Row instead of GTA, whether the purchase is hoped to be interpreted as a “vote” or not.

– The last GTA title [and indeed, every core game in the series] is on PC.
– R*’s most recent games [MP3 and L.A Noire] are on PC.
– A position as part of a team porting a game to PC [realistically there’s nothing else it could be] was discovered.

Red Dead is the recent exception to Rockstar porting games, not the rule many would have you believe.

As for the game itself – meh, it looks pretty fun, but it’s still going to be same old GTA. It’s not exactly something I’m salivating at the concept of playing like so many appear to be.

Whether they’ll actually put effort to make a decent port, or if they’ll rush out a broken version to meet a big shopping season, is anybody’s guess… but my Magic 8-Ball is saying “PROBABLY THE FORMER”.

Because they do this tired dance with every game (except Red Dead Redemption). “Oh, yeah, this is only for consoles. yeah, no plans for a PC version.” 6-8 months pass “Oh hey, we’re doing a PC version after all. But you bought the console version thinking that that was the only way you were going to get to play it, right? I mean, you did, right?”

They got me with IV, and even managed to get me again with the DLC, but there will be none of that from me from here on out. Frankly, if it doesn’t come to PC I just won’t play it. The experience is too compromised on console.

I don’t know about buying GTAV, watching a few hours of Cryaotic streaming it last night gave me pretty severe Last of Us aiming controls flashbacks. Consoles and shooting don’t really mix well for me.

Well, that and the Gamespot review didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm regarding the game’s portrayal of women. So meh.

Have no console that it is released on, so will be waiting on the PC version (I doubt I will have to choose between it or the Wii U.)

I’m sure I will get it at release or as soon as there is deal, but, to be honest, I won’t be that bothered if isn’t released. It looks to be very much the same again and I would much rather go back and finish Saint’s Row 3 and get SR4.

I have finally started to play Episodes from Liberty City though. I had forgotten how ugly GTA 4 was! The combat is also incredibly stilted. Have we really come so far since it came out or was it always so shonky? There are also still lots of bugs and still doesn’t run particularly great considering how it looks.

I definitely appreciated Volition poking fun at Rockstar’s stubborn refusal to get with the 21st century and support PC day and date. But you know and I know that a PC version of GTA V will come and (even if it’s a terrible port like GTA IV started as) will be a 10x better experience on PC than on the ancient decade+ old console systems. So I’ll be holding out for that, thanks.

I wanted to wait for GTA V for PC, but I caved in a few days before it even came out and even pre-ordered it. At least it gives me a reason to dust off my PS3 again. Until it arrives (on Friday hopefully) I’ll have a lot of fun with GAT V though. The knife launcher is the best part of this pack. So fun to use.

I got the game for Xbox, but I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet. If anyone wants to shoot me, my nick is “Spoon Of Doom85”.

So far I really like the game. When you start playing, there are a couple of ugly popup problems, but seemingly only in the first couple of minutes. After that, everything works fine and I have to say that the game looks far better than I expected from a console. The city and surrounding area are awesome, the missions have a lot of variety and there is lots to do, from ingame sports to the random mini quests happening around town. Cars have somewhat strange behaviour to them, somewhere between GTA 4 and full on arcade physics, but you get used to it quickly. The main characters are rather interesting, although I’m not really sure I like Trevor too much.
Yesterday I did my first heist mission, which was a real highlight. Haven’t yet played the multiplayer, but even if it sucks, the single player more than makes up for it. I didn’t like GTA 4 too much for a variety of reasons, but I’m really loving 5 so far.

I preordered for PS3. It’s loads of fun so far, but it would definitely benefit from a proper PC release. The graphics are by far the weakest part with not so great textures and some pretty horrendous pop in.